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The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual

The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011. So assuming at least 1 million users, they are seeking: 1,000,000 users * $100 per user * 365 days per year * 2 years = ~ $73 billion in damages. I'm not commenting on whether data-mining on Google's part was right or wrong, but why isn't there any limit to the amount that companies can be sued for? It seems impractical for the people suing to sue for around 73 billion dollars when the product/service is essentially free.

dagw 13y ago
Initial damage claims are often made on the assumption that once all appeals and negotiations are done you'll be very lucky to walk away with even 5% of the original number.
ronaldx 13y ago
The cost of the product is surely irrelevant here: If the product damages your life (in an unexpected way), you should be able to sue to recoup those damages. In this case, presumably the individuals may have been signed up to Google Apps for Education without their direct consent (or, it was an unstated requirement of their courses to sign up). Also note: companies have access to liability insurance to cover them for being sued out of existence. Google presumably have a budget for lawsuits.
- Tomdarkness 13y ago
  My experience with Google Apps is when you create a new user the first time they log in they are presented with the T&Cs they have to agree to before they can use the account.
  - prawn 13y ago
    If this Apps for Education platform is targeted at children, are many unable to consent to terms perhaps?
    - plg 13y ago
      also (1) children in school may have no choice but to agree, and (2) just because you agree to something in a contract doesn't necessarily mean it's enforceable. For example there are some rights you can't sign away in a contract.
    - svenkatesh 13y ago
      Apps for Education targets Universities.
      - dalke 13y ago
        Quoting from the article: "Apps for Education is used by K-12 schools and institutions of higher education throughout the world..." Go to the Apps for Education page at Google, select "Customers", choose "K12" and it lists 10 primary and secondary education school systems as profiled "customer stories". For example, "Saline Area Schools is a suburban/rural public school district of 5,450 students K-12 located in southeast Michigan, about 50 miles west of Detroit." ... "Encouraged by the success with faculty and staff, the Saline IT team will soon roll Google Apps out to their 3,200 students in grades 5-12." https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5AOHQcS-cAeODQ3MGVkNGEtNzJmNS00MTE5LTliZmEtZjNiZGRmODZiM2Fm/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5AOHQcS-cAeODQ3MGVkNGEtNzJm...
        svenkatesh 13y ago
        This is the full list of places where they're used: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/customers.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/customers.ht... Most are universities.
        dalke 13y ago
        That is "not the full list". That is a list of "customer stories", and certainly a subset of the full list. In fact, it's the site I suggested you visit. Next, use the pull-down under "all types" to see that the three targets are "K12", "Organization", and "University".
- izzydata 13y ago
  The problem seems to be that there actually haven't been any damages. Not a single person has been negatively affected by these targeted ads and nobody has had their personal information actually read. They have no chance with this lawsuit.
jw2013 13y ago
Gmail is free to you, but their ads can earn more money by mining the info in your email. Is this really free here? Your email content has value.
- morganvachon 13y ago
  Exactly. If anything, Google should pay the user for the privilege of mining their email. Maybe not much, since they do provide such a useful service, but even $20 per year would be pennies on the dollar for the value of the user's info. It wouldn't be enough for me to start using their service again, but for a lot of people it would be.
josephlord 13y ago
> but why isn't there any limit to the amount that companies can be sued for? Because there is no limit on the damage that they could have done (regardless of the cost of the service). In many cases non-customers may be harmed (e.g. Deep Water Horizon) so there is no relevance of the cost of the service to the amount of potential damage that can be caused. I'm not claiming that this claim is reasonable or that the amount of damage claimed here is remotely correct.
mike-cardwell 13y ago
Small companies can be sued into bankruptcy. Why should large companies be exempt?
rayiner 13y ago
There are two premises behind imposing damages in civil suits: 1) Restitution for the injured parties. Hard to measure in a case like this, but you can essentially think of this as the digital equivalent of conversion (i.e. using someone else's property for personal profit without permission). So the fair restitution might be whatever dollar figure the person would have been willing to have been paid to have that information data mined. 2) Deterrence of harmful behavior. The proper measure for this should be (dollar amount of profit from choosing the harmful course of action) / (probability of getting caught). I.e. if you do something harmful and profit $10 million, and have a 10% chance of getting caught, then assessing restitution and punitive damages of $100 million makes taking the harmful course of action economically irrational. An arbitrary cap, or a cap based on the price of the product, is not relevant to either measure.

dagw 13y ago

Initial damage claims are often made on the assumption that once all appeals and negotiations are done you'll be very lucky to walk away with even 5% of the original number.

ronaldx 13y ago

The cost of the product is surely irrelevant here: If the product damages your life (in an unexpected way), you should be able to sue to recoup those damages. In this case, presumably the individuals may have been signed up to Google Apps for Education without their direct consent (or, it was an unstated requirement of their courses to sign up). Also note: companies have access to liability insurance to cover them for being sued out of existence. Google presumably have a budget for lawsuits.

Tomdarkness 13y ago
My experience with Google Apps is when you create a new user the first time they log in they are presented with the T&Cs they have to agree to before they can use the account.
- prawn 13y ago
  If this Apps for Education platform is targeted at children, are many unable to consent to terms perhaps?
  - plg 13y ago
    also (1) children in school may have no choice but to agree, and (2) just because you agree to something in a contract doesn't necessarily mean it's enforceable. For example there are some rights you can't sign away in a contract.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    Apps for Education targets Universities.
    - dalke 13y ago
      Quoting from the article: "Apps for Education is used by K-12 schools and institutions of higher education throughout the world..." Go to the Apps for Education page at Google, select "Customers", choose "K12" and it lists 10 primary and secondary education school systems as profiled "customer stories". For example, "Saline Area Schools is a suburban/rural public school district of 5,450 students K-12 located in southeast Michigan, about 50 miles west of Detroit." ... "Encouraged by the success with faculty and staff, the Saline IT team will soon roll Google Apps out to their 3,200 students in grades 5-12." https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5AOHQcS-cAeODQ3MGVkNGEtNzJmNS00MTE5LTliZmEtZjNiZGRmODZiM2Fm/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5AOHQcS-cAeODQ3MGVkNGEtNzJm...
      - svenkatesh 13y ago
        This is the full list of places where they're used: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/customers.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/customers.ht... Most are universities.
        dalke 13y ago
        That is "not the full list". That is a list of "customer stories", and certainly a subset of the full list. In fact, it's the site I suggested you visit. Next, use the pull-down under "all types" to see that the three targets are "K12", "Organization", and "University".
izzydata 13y ago
The problem seems to be that there actually haven't been any damages. Not a single person has been negatively affected by these targeted ads and nobody has had their personal information actually read. They have no chance with this lawsuit.

jw2013 13y ago

Gmail is free to you, but their ads can earn more money by mining the info in your email. Is this really free here? Your email content has value.

morganvachon 13y ago
Exactly. If anything, Google should pay the user for the privilege of mining their email. Maybe not much, since they do provide such a useful service, but even $20 per year would be pennies on the dollar for the value of the user's info. It wouldn't be enough for me to start using their service again, but for a lot of people it would be.

josephlord 13y ago

> but why isn't there any limit to the amount that companies can be sued for? Because there is no limit on the damage that they could have done (regardless of the cost of the service). In many cases non-customers may be harmed (e.g. Deep Water Horizon) so there is no relevance of the cost of the service to the amount of potential damage that can be caused. I'm not claiming that this claim is reasonable or that the amount of damage claimed here is remotely correct.

mike-cardwell 13y ago

Small companies can be sued into bankruptcy. Why should large companies be exempt?

rayiner 13y ago

There are two premises behind imposing damages in civil suits: 1) Restitution for the injured parties. Hard to measure in a case like this, but you can essentially think of this as the digital equivalent of conversion (i.e. using someone else's property for personal profit without permission). So the fair restitution might be whatever dollar figure the person would have been willing to have been paid to have that information data mined. 2) Deterrence of harmful behavior. The proper measure for this should be (dollar amount of profit from choosing the harmful course of action) / (probability of getting caught). I.e. if you do something harmful and profit $10 million, and have a 10% chance of getting caught, then assessing restitution and punitive damages of $100 million makes taking the harmful course of action economically irrational. An arbitrary cap, or a cap based on the price of the product, is not relevant to either measure.